Unconditional Body Beautiful - Part 10: My Height

I have been looking forward to this post for a while. At only 4'9", my height has been a blessing and a curse.

Over the years, I have been called small fry, shorty, and a number of other names, and I have been the
unwilling victim of a lot of short jokes.

Jeans: The Limited Petites

My height makes people think I
am younger than I am. A contractor once asked my mother if my then
boyfriend was my babysitter - I was 22 years old and a college
graduate!!! In high school, I was at a car wash with a male friend. A
little girl, probably all of seven, came up to me and asked me to see if my "dad" would allow me to play with her. That was actually kind of precious. :-)

My height has at times felt like a liability in regards to my level of attractiveness to the opposite sex. After dating for a couple months, my first boyfriend once told me, "I didn't think a short girl could be so sexy." Ummm...thanks?

The reality is that while I have often wished that I
was taller so that clothes would fit better off the rack or because of
occasional desires to have Giselle legs, I also came to terms with my
height many years ago. My height doesn't define me any more than the shape of my body does.

Booties: Target

With all the negatives of being short, not least of which is not being able to reach things from top shelves, I have generally felt just fine about my height. They say good things come in small packages, and my height has often made me feel cute. When struggling with body image, my height made me feel a little more positive about my body - I still felt "little" (as though taking up more space is such a bad thing).

Through the years, for better or worse, my height has just become part of who I am. I am short like my mother, who is short like her grandmother. My short stature gives me a lower center of gravity. If I should fall down, I have less of a fall. Yep, there are advantages to being short too!

Necklace: Ann Taylor

Ultimately, I have learned that my height has no bearing on anything. I have great calves because of standing on my tippy toes to reach for items. If I can't reach something, I can get a stool or ask for help. I am attractive, beautiful, sexy, etc. because of who I am, not because of or in spite of my height.

In the past, I never would have worn cropped jeans with a long sweater as I was taught this was unflattering for someone of my height - that it made me look shorter. This ideas is based on the idea that being short is a bad thing when in fact being short is great! Today, I wear what I want!